Janet Grahame Johnstone (1928-1976) and Anne Grahame Johnstone (1928-1998)
Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone were born on 1 June 1928 to Doris Zinkeisen and her husband, Captain Grahame Johnstone. Janet was the elder sister by twenty minutes, yet their brother Murray, also very close to them, has described them as being one and a half rather than two people. When their father died in 1946, the twins continued to live with their mother through their adult lives, first in London and then, from 1966, in Suffolk.
Janet and Anne were educated at Heathfield School, Ascot, during the Second World War, and then studied in London, at St Martin’s School of Art. In the early 1950s, they established themselves as illustrators by receiving regular commissions for picture books from Award Publications and Deans. Between them, they illustrated over a hundred books for children, including many volumes of fairy stories, myths and legends, nursery rhymes and prayers.
They also reached an even wider audience by producing a large amount of artwork for such favourite programmes as Andy Pandy and Bill and Ben, so contributing to a golden age of children’s television.
In 1956, Janet and Anne were invited by the successful writer Dodie Smith to illustrate her first children’s book, The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Smith had based the dogs in her story on her own Dalmatians, and Janet and Anne used them as their models, creating convincing, unsentimental characters. They also drove through Regent’s Park, in London, and around Essex to ensure the accuracy of topographical and architectural detail. Their illustrations became so intrinsic to the pleasure of the book that, when Walt Disney made it the basis of an animated film, the animators involved them as a guide and so created a surprisingly successful English atmosphere. The book was so well received that the author chose to work again with the artists to produce its sequels, The Starlight Barking (1967) and The Midnight Kittens (1978) – all three being published by Heinemann.
Janet and Anne also illustrated three books by Paul Gallico, another favourite children’s author published by Heinemann; these were The Man who was Magic (1966), Manxmouse (1968) and Miracle in the Wilderness (1975).
With uncanny mutual understanding, Janet and Anne worked together on their pictures, each adding a touch in turn until they agreed that they had finished, a practice they applied even to the tiniest monochrome vignette. However, each sister developed her own complementary specialities, so that Anne completed the human figures and buildings while Janet depicted the birds and animals. The love with which they accomplished these tasks shines through in the final illustrations, which always appear as the creation of one, admittedly rich, imagination. They also proved that they could extend this singular achievement beyond illustration, making a copy of a famous portrait of Emma Hamilton for HMS Victory in Portsmouth, and designed a projected theme park for Denmark based on the fairy tales of Hans Andersen.
Following the death of Janet, in 1979, as the result of a house fire, Anne Grahame Johnstone found herself – suddenly and unexpectedly – responsible for the preservation of this shared enterprise. With an admirable determination, she fulfilled outstanding commissions and taught herself the skills once employed by her sister, both artistic and practical; for the more outgoing Janet had been the driver of their car and the negotiator with their publishers. Anne’s success at maintaining the particular look of the Grahame Johnstone picture book did not hamper her innovation; she wrote her own texts, such as that to Santa’s Toyshop (1980), and produced a number of books in a pop-up format (1982-83). She also designed popular Christmas cards for Royles and delightfully complicated Christmas cards for Waddingtons. Nursery versions of The Water Babies (1986) (no 456) and Peter Pan and Wendy (1988) (nos 451-455), published by Award, show how, late in the 1980s, her own inventive spark still fired the long established tradition.
Anne Grahame Johnstone had joined her new need to draw and paint animals to an existing love for horses and carriage driving, and so developed in a direction already successfully essayed by her mother. Capitalising on her work with Janet on illustrations to Sallie Walrond’s Encyclopedia of Carriage Driving (1974), Anne worked increasingly as an equestrian portraitist, eventually being elected, in May 1988, to the Society of Equestrian Artists. She must surely have relished one particular commission, which allowed her to combine her experience of the carriage with her profound historical knowledge: as an artist attached to the College of Arms, she undertook the heraldic work on the restored Mail Coach of the Post Office Museum.
Anne Grahame Johnstone exhibited her work close to her Suffolk home of Badingham, at Framlingham and Orford, and also in Cambridge and London. In Christmas 1997, she attended the private view of the annual Illustrators exhibition at Chris Beetles Gallery, and was thrilled to find the clientele responding so enthusiastically to her illustrations: all works included in the show quickly sold. Working in her studio until two days before her death, on 25 May 1998, she continued to delight and engage her public to the very end of her career.
